Thursday: Our High Priest
Daily Lesson for Thursday 4th of April 2024
What Jesus did for us on the cross enables Him also to intercede for us in heaven. Our resurrected Lord is our great High Priest, providing everything we need to be saved and to live in God’s kingdom forever.
Read Hebrews 4:15-16 and Hebrews 7:25. How do these verses give us assurance in a world of temptation, suffering, disease, and death?
Image © Lars Justinen at Goodsalt.com
The text says that He “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15, NKJV). And it adds, “Let us therefore come boldly”—that means confidently—“to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16, NKJV).
To state it very simply, Jesus presents us before the universe as clothed in His righteousness, saved by His death, and redeemed through His blood. Everything we should have been, He was. In Christ there is no condemnation for the sins of our past. In Christ our guilt is gone, and through His mighty intercession, the grip of sin on our lives is broken. The chains that bind us are loosed, and we are free.
Read John 17:24-26. What is Christ’s longing desire in the great controversy between good and evil?
“When the great sacrifice had been consummated, Christ ascended on high, refusing the adoration of angels until He had presented the request: ‘I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.’ John 17:24. Then with inexpressible love and power came forth the answer from the Father’s throne: ‘Let all the angels of God worship Him.’ Hebrews 1:6. Not a stain rested upon Jesus. His humiliation ended, His sacrifice completed, there was given unto Him a name that is above every name.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, pp. 501, 502. Jesus wants more than anything else for us to be with Him in heaven. The desire of His heart, the reason for His death and intercession, is to save us. Do you have a special need in your life? Tell it to Jesus. Where there is sorrow, He brings comfort. Where there is fear, He brings peace. Where there is guilt, He brings forgiveness. Where there is weakness, He brings strength.
Why do you think Christ sacrificed Himself for us? What makes us so valuable to Him?
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Praise God for revealing to us the resources that He has put in place to reconnect humanity with divinity and restore us to His sinless divine nature. So, "thank God" for our High Priest, Jesus Christ.
When we are talking about our High Priest, immediately our attention is focused on the risen Lord - Jesus Christ, and the multi-faceted aspects of the majesty and glory of the person and His work on our behalf as He ministers before God the Father, both as the Son of God and the Son of Man as is alluded to briefly throughout this particular lesson (in fact, the entire lesson for this week).
We see the omniscience of Christ. We see His interest and evaluation of the works, life, and activity of the church/His people. This should make us careful to walk by His Spirit, for it is Christ, Himself, whose searching eyes, like a flame of fire, tries our works (Revelation 2 and 3).
We see the sufficiency and capacity of Christ to meet our needs and deal with our failures in the light of His person and work, past, present, and future. Jesus Christ identifies with us when we give our lives to Him. He becomes one with us (Zechariah 2:8).
We see His active ministry on behalf of His people. We see that He is our Advocate and Intercessor. Our Advocate is righteous and this gives us the assurance that the Father will hear His intercession on our behalf, because Christ could do nothing that His Father would reject (Romans 8:34; 1 John 2:1).
We see how the perfections of Christ's person and work answers to the needs, problems, and conditions experienced by His people. We see Christ's deity as the absolutely righteous One, the One totally set apart from sin. We see that He interceeds for those who have sinned, presenting Himself - the One who has not sinned - as the righteous One who stands in our stead (Psalm 25:8; Romans 10:4).
We see that Jesus Christ is the answer to our salvation. Our salvation is centered in the perfect life, death, and ministry of Christ (Ephesians 2:8, 9; 1 Timothy 2:5).
We see that Jesus Christ is both our justification and sanctification. He saves completely by forgiving our sins, justifying us, and cleansing us from our sins - sanctifying us.
Last but not least, we see that we can trust Jesus Christ to represent us before God, because He has been consecrated by God to be our One and Only High Priest (oh how I wish that our Catholic friends would believe this truth). Jesus Christ vindicates us against Satan's accusations. Our victory is IN Him beacuse He is the VICTOR (as part of the title of Monday's lesson says "Christ Prevails"). Hence we can have no fear during the Investigative Judgment (which I have not specifically identified as an aspect of His work, since this lesson has not addressed that).
So, again, as this week's lesson has referred to time and again, we have a God of Love, Grace, and Mercy, who has done just about everything to save the human race, except to make the choice for us to accept Him as our personal Lord and Saviour. Oh dear, we will have not excuse if we are lost. MARANATHA!
We will not have any excuse, if we are lost. Jesus gave everything ( His Life ) for us to have Life Everlasting.
Praise the Lord.
It's impossible to measure God's love for us. But if there is a word that "translates" it, this is Jesus!
God is truly amazing. Thank you Lord for that great sacrifice where you gave your life for humanity. Lord in addition you have given us assurance through your priestly ministry where you are interceding on our behalf.
Jesus I am looking forward to spend eternity with you. Please help us all to be faithful to the end.
Thank you Jesus for what you have done!
Amazing Love!
To answer the questions at the end of the lesson – “Why do you think Christ sacrificed Himself for us? What makes us so valuable to Him?
I see the value of humanity in that we have been given our Creator’s breath of life also in spirit. More then a mere sentient being, He gave us the ability to commune with Him intelligently. We can recognize Him as our God and fellowship with our Creator. Man, I believe, is the only creature that has the ability to do this.
Referring to our Lord and Savior as the ‘High Priest’ sheds light on who Paul is talking to – his fellow countrymen still under the Law. I am not aware that he referred to Jesus in such a way when preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles.
My understanding is a bit different regarding the death of Jesus. To me it means that He fulfilled, authenticated, identified Himself with the Old Testament prophecy given to the Hebrews; to assure His fellow country men one more time that He was the sacrificial lamb which takes away their sin; ultimate ending the Law's demands by fulfilling it.
I see Jesus as mankind's teacher, counselor, advocate, and mediator in their spiritual relationship with their God; man's ultimate authority. Jesus spoke to us about His Father, our Father. He did so as the divine Son of God in human form. He wants man to understand that when being in Him, in His divinity by faith we will be in the presence of our Creator. Our ability to be in fellowship with our heavenly Father is, I believe, why we are considered valuable to Him.
I didn't write a comment for Thursday because I had a procedure that required anaesthesia early in the morning, which sort of reduced my capacity for the rest of the day. I thought it would be a good idea to go shopping but Carmel said "No!" In the circumstances, I thought that writing comments for Sabbath School Net was classified as working with heavy machinery and should be left for 24 hours. I should add that I am not suffering from a serious illness; it was just routine maintenance for a person of my age. The doctors just didn't want me kicking them while they were doing it.
So here is my comment - a day late.
I did want to add a thought to this thread though because sometimes we get onto the stage with our understanding of the high priesthood of Jesus.
A little background story about my sister and I. She is going to read this so I have to be careful what I say. As a kid I used to enjoy reading. I read "The Great Controversy" before I was 12. My sister was not academic, she struggled to remember the details of some of the well-known Bible stories. My brother and I were not kind to her and used to make fun of her inability to recall. What I did not know was that while I was busy showing off my academic prowess, my sister was learning to live a loving caring Christian life. She even forgives me for the sibling taunting she used to get from us. And she learned to cook plant-based cooking, (I was going to say, "to die for" but obviously that is the wrong metaphor here), "to live for!" If you ever get invited to her place for Sabbath lunch, you will be lining up to be the first on the invite for the next Sabbath. And her cooking is shared with a quiet Christian witness that is a legend.
In a blog such as this, we love discussing things like the priesthood of Jesus. But in the big wide world where we are spreading the Gospel, the forensic arguments about the topic cut a very narrow swathe.
Jesus is our high priest, but in a world where the only time secular people hear the word priest is in the Catholic and Orthodox church environment, the idea is often misunderstood.
The message that we need to get across is that Jesus loves us and wants us back. And if we preach that message through good cooking we have gone a long way to understanding and sharing that message.
I own a big debt to my sister for patiently teaching me that!
"By this shall all men know ..."